Freddie was the one that then had to try and explain what happened, and the best that he could come up with was that the players did actually try to play football for about 20 minutes! Anyway here is what he said on Arsenal.com after the match….
“We’re disappointed to lose at home. The main thing is we didn’t show up in the first half. We were very passive and we had a chat at half-time, made a tactical change and all of a sudden we looked like a team. For 20 minutes or so we really pushed them, scored goals and thought we could win the game, but VAR was correct. That’s how we have to play the whole game. I said to the players that you can’t give away a whole half to any team in the Premier League. That’s what we need to learn from.”
Then he was asked how he coulddo anything to change things for the better. “That’s the tough part.” he replied. “They look very short on confidence. In the first half they were scared to get the ball and a bit scared to move, they were just standing still. That’s something we need to talk about. They need to have a win, we need to dig out a win and get them some confidence. They can do it because they showed it in the beginning of the second half and they did it really well for 20 minutes. It’s hard to say that when you lose at home, but they were very good in that little spell.
“It’s obvious that nervousness from a crowd can affect footballers, it doesn’t matter what quality you have. They’re human beings like everyone else, they want to do well and they feel the pressure. That’s something we need to work on and I feel like if we just dig out a win, we can get there. They showed it in the second half.
“Like I said against Norwich, if you score the first goal you don’t have to chase the game, you don’t have to open up as much because you can control the game so that’s something that, in my opinion, we need to change that a little bit. We won the balls but you’re right, when they ran at us it often ends with a shot on target. We’ve had one training session but we’ll keep on working.
“It’s never easy when you sack a manager and you’re low on confidence. We started really well at Norwich. We started the second half really well and I was sure we were going to win the game and get going again. We get a sucker punch on a counter or as they play down one side. It’s hard to take but we keep plugging away.”
So this is the question, how do you pick up a team that is on a streak of 9 games in a row without winning one of them? But it would appear that the whole club is in freefall and has no belief whatsoever.
Freddie must be in utter despair after this performance from his team, and he must be wondering what on earth he can do give him and the players their pride back.
Good luck with that Freddie….
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